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Newest Star Wars Reviews Suprisingly Positive
Patchw0rk F0g writes "CBC is reporting on the suprising results of pre-screenings of Lucas' latest (and final) installment of his sci-fi epic. From TFA, "The advance reviews of Revenge of the Sith, the sixth - and final - Star Wars film, have been mostly positive - and in some cases outright effusive." Go figure... maybe Georgie got it right finally."
the sixth - and final - Star Wars film
final? aren't there supposed to be nine when they are all done?
Are we sure that there wasn't a ghost writer on this one? ESB is that best and wasn't written by Lucas. Or, maybe he just learn to write this time around. Either way, I have read that it's damn good and can't wait to see it the minute it opens.
Evolution or ID?
Firstly I hated the episode one, episode two was alright. So I wasnt expecting much. This one was great, I enjoyed every bit, theres a constant dark undertone to the whole film which is whats been missing from the first two. Go and see it.
I wont tell you how it ends...
Lucas isn't that bad of a writer. At least not as bad as he is a director. He does write some pretty flaky dialogue, but good direction and acting can overcome that (ie: allowing the characters to improvise or reword so it sounds more natural and believable).
.. and a good chunk of that is the direction. Lucas' "vision" has always been stunning visual effects .. and not much else... and he writes for that.
... but IMO that's mostly due to them being part of the franchise. Had they been standalone movies I think they would have flopped (or at least I HOPE they would have flopped .. lol).
The problem is that a script is supposed to be a just a guideline. A script by itself is nothing.. it takes a lot to bring it to life
Don't forget that he also wrote Empire, Jedi and the Indiana Jones trilogy. As long as someone else directs his movies are usually a success.
In fact, the only movie that he directed that was a huge success on it's own merit* was A New Hope.. and even Lucas himself admitted it was a near disaster.. and that he had brought in some brilliant editors (Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew) that saved the movie.
* You can consider the prequels a financial success
I mean, other than having a movie about a guy talking about himself ...
The characters are dropped into situations and they react. Like when Han shot a bounty hunter sitting across from him.
Lucas' problem isn't character development. His problem is back-story. Vader had more character development in ep 4 & 5 than any other bad guy has had in ep 1-3.
Lucas just doesn't know how to write a story that will result in the character he has already developed. Which is why he falls back on fan-boy tricks of re-introducing the previously created characters and such (the droids, Boba's daddy, Tatoonie, etc).
Vader has character.
Annie is just put through some badly written situations and dialog so we can get to the Vader suit.
Well, just what was stupid about episodes 1 and 2, you ask? I invite others to add to the list, or dispute my inclusion of the following:
1) Anakin grew up on the planet his son later hides on, yeh. So, maybe those Storm Troopers are retards and kill the people raising his son, but even turned to the dark side he feels so little that he doesn't shred the troopers who killed them into hamburger? They're his own relatives, for crying out loud. All GL had to do, was put this on another planet, it's a big universe.
2) Darth knows the droids, from his childhood? Yeh right. What does this add to the story? All the big story's in humanity's history have room for literally thousands of important people, important players. If they needed some droids (and yeh, they probably did), why not invent some new ones?
3) Yoda bounces around like a $10 toy from the bratstore? Yoda was supposed to be literally *awesome* if you did piss him off. Not comical. Yoda should have opened his robes, and anywhere from 6-20 lightsabers just levitate outward from him and activate. The bad guy (Darth Brooks? I forget his name) would have to do everything he can to not be mowed down by the cloud of spinning lightsabers biting at him from every side, even the distractions he might throw at Yoda would be smacked away. Let him escape, sure. But make it look like the guy beat the 100,000 to 1 odds in doing so.
4) Absolutely clueless intrigue. Even the bad guys in both shows would be amateurs when put up against the likes of my local city council. The good guys wouldn't stand a chance against the maternity ward at a hospital. The Jedi have magical powers, dammit, and you're telling me they never even notice a Sith Lord on the same planet as their headquarters? That once they know about him, it's all up to Ewan McGregor to find out what's going on? Aren't there dozens of Jedi, even hundreds (if not thousands). With influence at the highest levels of government?
5) The big Jedi battle against whatever those things were. They have to be rescued by storm troopers? Mace Windex runs around like a fat man, out of breath, sloppily hacking at things like one of the three stooges would swat at a bee. Some of these Jedi get nailed without ever even seeing it coming. It was so lame. If they can't squash an army that has less than 50 attackers per Jedi, then it's just plain dumb. You get the impression in the first 3 that if the Death Star coughs, Vader will go down to the surface and destroy the damn planet himself. With one arm tied around his back. He might be one of the most powerful ever, but the other Jedis should be with in a few orders of magnitude of that.
And Lawrence Kasdan is one of the best writers in the industry. If it weren't for his inclusion in the Star Wars franchise early on, those movies would probably have been disasters too. It's too bad he couldn't have helped write/written Eps I, II and III, because if he had, even with Lucas' highly questionable directing, the movies would have been MUCH better.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.